Table 1 Perceived benefits for sharing frailty-related information in perioperative care

…through identifying frailty-related complications

x

x

x

The identification of frail patients implies potential determination of related diseases and complications.

The practitioners in private practice are primarily not affected by this benefit. Their role as the starting point in the process is to generate the data and detect further diseases in order for the subsequent stakeholders to adapt the patient treatment. The health insurance companies benefit through a more comprehensive information base on the insured patients.

Treatment quality and time

Treatment quality

… through implementing standardized decision processes

x

x

The alignment of the involved stakeholders with respect to the processes and database could enhance the treatment and decision-making processes.

Standardization of the heterogenic database will cause high costs and effort for the practitioners in private practice. Being in the early stage of the process, they face the least potential benefit. From the current perspective, the healthcare providers are not concerned by the increase in data standardization, as it constitutes mainly a benefit for the operative stakeholders.

Treatment time

… through avoiding repetitious procedures

x

x

Data sharing and the implementation of standardized data sets could reduce the number of medical tests.

Repetitious procedures concern subsequent process steps and stakeholders, therefore not the practitioners in private practice and the geriatric center. The health insurance benefits financially from the elimination of repetitions.

… through reducing waiting times for patients

x

The enhancement of the processes and data sets would ultimately have an impact on the waiting times between treatment steps.

This mainly concerns the patient and partially the health insurance, as it might result in financial benefits.

Costs saving

Pre-operative

… through stratifying patients

x

x

Stratification enables the grouping of patients (e.g. high risk) and enables individual treatment processes.

The geriatric center could be systematically integrated in the patient treatment, which is currently still not the case. Also, it increases process reliability for the surgeon / anesthesiologist, as they could base the treatment planning on differentiated information on the patients.

Operative

… through avoiding operation cancellations

x

This leads to financial damages for the clinic (mainly surgery) and the health insurance.

The early stratification of the patient enables the surgeons to consider a more comprehensive view on the patients and their resilience to overcome an operation.

Post-op.

… through avoiding intensive care treatments

x

x

Intensive care treatments are related to uncertainty of the treatment planning, personnel expenditures (clinic) and high financial effort (health insurance).

In relation to the stratification of patients, intensive care treatments could ultimately be avoided.